[Test-Announce] Fedora 18 Alpha is hereby declared GOLD

[Chris Murphy]

On Sep 17, 2012, at 3:34 PM, Jesse Keating wrote:

> Also, the point of marking something as GOLD was that it's ready to be staged for distribution. GOLD meant Gold Master, that is the master copy was produced and sent off to the duplicators. 

Right. The GM refers to the digital version from which the physical stamping plate for mass producing CD/DVD's are made, or the stamping plate itself. Companies, even big ones who had to send out CD's to alpha and beta testers by mail because the software was big enough and the internet slow enough, never made mass produced CD's for software. The were in-house made by burning, not stamping. i.e. there was no GM. The term GM or GOLD is simply inapplicable to alphas and betas.

> "Ready for testing" doesn't quite embody that same idea.

Good. It shouldn't.

> "Completed" seems to make some sense, the Alpha has been completed and is now being staged for release.

I would use the word "RELEASE" instead of TC1, TC2, RC1, RC2. So "Fedora 18 Alpha RC3" became "Fedora 18 Alpha Release". It was after all a "release candidate" and once no longer a candidate, it is a release.

"Completed" adds yet another term that seems unnecessary, albeit vastly more appropriate than GOLD or GM.

Chris Murphy